I know here we are not surprised. It seems they have made alot of progress in other areas in a record time.

Federal agencies may miss Y2K deadline By Erich Luening Staff Writer, CNET News.com March 18, 1999, 1:15 p.m. PT

With just weeks before a White House deadline for all federal mission critical systems to be Year 2000 compliant, a report released today shows that three agencies are likely to miss the deadline.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, the Health and Human Services Department, and the Transportation Department "are not making adequate progress," the Office of Management and Budget wrote in its eighth quarterly report on the progress of the federal government to rid its computer systems of the Year 2000 technology problem.

Although these agencies are still lagging behind in their Y2K efforts, officials within the Clinton administration praised the progress other federal departments made during the last quarter.

"The agencies continue to make significant strides toward meeting the March 31 government-wide goal for the Year 2000 compliance of mission critical systems," said G. Edward Deseve, deputy director for the management office of OMB. "Data received from the agencies as of February 12, 1999, indicate that 79 percent of the government's mission critical systems are now Year 2000 compliant, up from 61 percent the previous quarter."

Five agencies--the Environmental Protection Agency, the Social Security Administration, the Small Business Administration, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the National Science Foundation--report that their mission-critical systems are now 100 percent compliant.

Thirteen agencies have achieved OMB's most favorable rating, or tier 3, and the departments of Defense, Energy, and State have made enough progress to move out of OMB's tier 1 category--those agencies making inadequate progress.

"I am confident that over 90 percent of the government's mission critical systems will meet the March 31 goal," said Deseve. OMB will be "working with the agencies on business continuity and contingency plans to avert disruptions in the event of system failures or malfunctions."

The so-called millennium bug refers to the fact that many computers are programmed to register only the last two digits of the year, meaning that "2000" may be read as "1900." If left uncorrected, such programs could generate errors and scramble the computers that companies use to keep track of customers, run their payrolls, handle their accounts, run elevators, and monitor air traffic, some experts warn.

Unlike in previous quarters when the government has raised--by at least a billion--the estimated cost to wipe out Y2K from agency systems, this most recent report found that agencies now estimate they will spend $6.8 billion to fix the problem, only a slight increase from the February estimate of $6.4 billion.

-- maji (majiWI@yahoo.com), March 18, 1999

Answers

Geee...The DOD must have really cut their number of critical systems...And does the USPS count as a federal entity?

I love the "lump them all together" technique of reporting percentages. It really clears things up for me. So now we know that about 80% of the "important" 20% were ready last month and the goal was to have them all ready by the end of March, but we not going to meet that so 90% is good enough to praise the ones making "...significant strides..."

Well Johnny, I decided to test you on only the fundamental arithmetic required in this calculus course and you failed to pass the test. But, I'll mark your grade as "Praised for Making Significant Strides." There. Everyone feels better.

-- PNG (png@gol.com), March 18, 1999.

Since there are only 3 that may not be fixed by March 31, I wonder how the testing on the other departments is going now. Please, any spokesperson, how's the testing going there buddies?

How about a weekly report on testing? Now that this is the last phase, I want to see on the Medicare pages, we are testing!!!

Mr. K
***smells something funny and it isn't his shoes***

-- Mr. K (late@night.here), March 18, 1999.

I think one or more of our circus elephants got loose in DC, and our SDPS (Super duper pooper scooper) hasn't caught up yet...

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), March 19, 1999.

I can hardly wait, this will be one hell of a show.

-- curtis schalek (schale1@ibm.net), March 19, 1999.

I really like that little tag line at the end: "... agencies now estimate they will spend $6.8 billion to fix the problem, only a slight increase from the February estimate of $6.4 billion."

The budget, people - with only six months to go before fiscal year 2000 - just increased 400,000,000.00 dollars - to be spent on remediation and repair - not testing yet - Now, granted not all perhaps will need to be spent in the next months - but they still don't know much it will cost - (Does this indicate they don't know what they have to fix yet?) - and they have 6 months to fix it in.

Now, to spend 400,000,000.00 in six months - how many people do you have to hire? How much new stuff can you buy? Remember - this is an increase of 400,000,000.00, we must assume that they have already hired enough people and bought enough programs and bought enough new computers to already be able to spend 6,400,000,000.00 from the original budget.

Or they'd be in real trouble, wouldn't they?

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), March 19, 1999.